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acloud2017
Contributor
Contributor

InstallSoftwareWorkflow. Install software work item timeout.

Getting a  "InstallSoftwareWorkflow. Install software work item timeout." error after i upgraded to 7.4 from 7.3 on my windows builds.  In the guestagent log I get "Wait for completion '10_installsoftware.bat'.  Any help would be grateful

4 Replies
daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

Did you upgrade your agents inside your templates to 7.4?

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acloud2017
Contributor
Contributor

Yes it did, it required me to update my agents on all my templates

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daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

Can you show the script you're trying to have your guest agent invoke?

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reid0000
Contributor
Contributor

I have been chasing this same problem where windows systems fail with this error. It appears to be related to a bug and I am testing a temp workaround. Would appreciate input from others.

I believe the problem exists in C:\opt\vmware-appdirector\agent-bootstrap\vcac-appd-gc.bat. At Line #24 we have:

set APPD_PROPERTIES_INPUT=%APPD_AGENT_DIRECTORY%\appd.properties_%date:~4,2%-%date:~7,2%-%date:~10,4%_%time:~0,2%%time:~3,2%_%time:~6,5%

You may end up with a space in this string. Can be problematic because this is used as a temp file name when its passed to vcac-appd-gc.js a little later. Line ~46:  cscript %~dpn0.js %APPD_PROPERTIES_INPUT% %CUSTOM_PROPERTIES_FILE% %* 2>&1 >> %VCAC_APPDCUSTOM_LOG%

So what seems to be happening is the temp file name gets truncated when a space exists. The file written is "appd.properties_06-05-2018_" instead of "appd.properties_06-05-2018_801_32.69" and the script eventually fails because its looking for a file to rename that does not exist here:

REM Rename the date time stamped temporary file to appd.properties file

ren %APPD_PROPERTIES_INPUT% %APPD_PROPERTIES%

For my testing, I dropped some of the time precision and changed Line #24 to:

set APPD_PROPERTIES_INPUT=%APPD_AGENT_DIRECTORY%\appd.properties_%date:~4,2%-%date:~7,2%-%date:~10,4%

This seems to have resolved the issue for me so far. Not sure of other impacts from this change.

[update] - A similar bug is discussed here and provides some suggestions to handle the leading zero if you are concerned about collisions: windows - Need leading zero for batch script using %time% variable - Server Fault

Not sure where to file a bug report for this but until a patch arrives, you will need to edit the file on your template after you install the agent or repackage the zip.